"5b8eb51" git revision testing thread

[merinfor2021]

Good day, @prochazkaml ! Finally I've tested the latest MichalOS ;-)
Please take a look at my observances:

1. ARCADE.APP - there's just a "sorryAss" entry, which - if launched - gives a green screen and blinking _
2. EDIT.APP - maybe it should filter out the file extensions, for which it is known that a text editor can not open them properly: .APP, .DRO, .RAD, ...
3. FONTEDIT.APP - maybe present a graphical char choosing menu, which is possible to navigate while seeing the character icons. + if I create a character, there's only SAVE and I don't know where it is saved, perhaps should be SAVE AS ---> ask for a character save number
4. MEMEDIT.APP - a small confusion around sd/shxxx & od/ohxxxx commands (dec/hex). How to choose between dec or hex?
5. MUNCHER.APP - when it prints "BASIC PROGRAM ENDED" , B is at the right edge of screen
6. PLAYER.APP - .DRZ file format is not described at PLAYER.APP right panel. Is it 7-zipped .DRO ?
7. RDTSC.APP - CPU speed in kHz is printed in a weird format - sometimes the spaces instead of numbers:

249  48
249  02
249 487
249  4
249 3 0
249 4 7
249 37

EDIT: maybe it's caused by my edit of "5" character on a previous step, so now it can't be seen at console?

8. SNAKE.APP - I cannot exit by pressing ESC, had to reboot by a power button
9. STARS.APP - the starfield isn't random enough ;-) stars are weirdly grouped by lines
10. SUDOKU.APP - maybe could be randomized using some "valid sudoku generator" algorithm

Luckily the holidays are coming soon - more time for testing a favorite floppy 👍

[prochazkaml]

Hi @merinfor2021, nice to see you here again!

Also, holy cow, I haven't worked on this project for a while now. But you know how it goes – you work on a project, then you find a fun little side project, then another one, then another one etc. and you end up in project hell.

Anyway, here's what I have to say:

1. There's only one game for now, The idea behind this app was to consolidate all of the tiny games into one app, since files on FAT12 (in this configuration) are stored in 512-byte units, so having multiple tiny files is just wasting precious floppy space.

   There are also these boot-sector games, which are tiny (they have to fit in 512 bytes or less!) and primitive but endlessly fun, so they wouldn't be too hard to add to this app. That is still something I'd love to do.

   The games that could be added was already discussed in the discussions tab in this repo, but I'd love to hear from you if found some others!

   (I should also rename SorryAss. The word "ass" in this case (at least I hope) is supposed mean "donkey", but most people already forgot this meaning. Perhaps the name "Donkey" could do, since that's the actual name of the game that this game is inspired by. If you have any ideas for a better name, please let me know! 😀)

2. Here's the thing: the text editor as a whole sucks. It can't open files over 28 K (not a big deal, but still, some MichalOS apps can already use en entire 64 K segment for file loading, so it would be nice to implement here as well), can't properly handle binary files (!), can't support over 79 characters per line (!!!), redraws the entire screen when moving the cursor (especially annoying on slow (virtual) machines) etc.

   I'd love to make a new text editor, which could do all of these things (and not be totally broken), but when a binary file would be loaded, it would also serve as a hex editor. (Of course, the text and hex edit mode could be swapped by a hotkey). I know that this sounds a bit ambitious, but I believe that it would be the best option.

   However, what could also be implemented (perhaps a bit more easily), would be a hotkey in the file selector to disable the filter. In that case, most users wouldn't accidentaly open a binary file, but advanced users can do whatever they want.

3. This app was made for development purposes to speed up font editing, it's not even in the main menu. (Imagine that I had to do the first font iteration by typing out binary by hand.) It's nowhere near being a full-featured app (it's basically a hacked-up pixel art editor). However, I should definitely make the app more user-friendly.

   The character selector sort of already exists in the ASCII art editor, so it shouldn't be too hard to implement.

4. sd, od, dd and wd accept a decimal number, while sh, oh, dh and wh accept a hex number.

5. Stupid mistake, already fixed by the time I post this.

6. DRZ is a LZ7-compressed DRO file, which has first been split into 64 kB segments. Already added the mention for it now.

7. If you edit a character in the Font editor, the character will change system-wide, so yes, that is very likely what's going on.

8. This app was full of weird key handling and stack hacks for exiting, fixed now.

9. It's a 16-bit pseudo-random number generator, there's sadly nothing much we can really do about that.

10. If I can find some algorithm that can do that (and it was relatively easy to implement in assembly), I'd definitely go for it, but I can see that it would be quite the challenge.

To-do list based on your feedback:

• Add more games to the Arcade app
• Rename SorryAss done
• Rewrite Donkey into a more sane video mode
• Make another text editor/hex editor
• Add a hotkey for toggling the filter
• Improve the font editor done
• Find a better pseudo random number generator (?)
• Find an algo for generating sudokus of varying difficulty

I'm sorry that I can't do all of these right now as I don't have much time, however, I'll definitely look into these tomorrow.

Other things I'd like to add:

• Make the input dialog escapable (→ be able to press Escape when in the text input). That would require properly modifying all of the apps which use the function, but it would be immensely useful (ie. when selecting Open in the Font editor and you forgot to save your changes, you can say goodbye to them).

Looking forward to hearing back from you! Luckily the holidays are coming soon – more time for development 😁

[merinfor2021]

@prochazkaml Nice to see you there! 😉 Thank you for fixing a couple of problems, I've just put a new floppy into my BIOS. MichalOS looks quite polished and gives a deep nostalgia/retro feels. Thank you so much for such a great OS - together with Kolibri it's my best favorites 😃 Please also add to your to-do "Fix a SorryAss" since it's not working for me: if launched - gives a green screen and blinking _ . I'm also looking forward for the holidays, to have a happy time with the stuff we love 🎅

[prochazkaml]

@merinfor2021 No problem, and thank you!

Donkey (renamed from SorryAss – made the commit 3 days ago, but forgot to push it, it's on here now) uses a weird text video mode, so it'll have to be entirely rewritten in either the standard text mode or some more common graphics mode. 🤷

Will take a look at it (along with all of the other issues I've put in my to-do list) some time soon. Can't tell you when exactly, however, I'll try my best to do it during the next week (or even tomorrow! – the afternoon classes that were supposed to take place at school have been dropped for some reason, so I have a couple of extra free hours on my schedule tomorrow, might as well put them to good use 😏).

Also, thank you for sticking around for such long time, you were here basically since the project has been first published, and have reported heaps of feedback making the OS overall way better! 😁

[prochazkaml]

Alright, so I at least worked on the Font editor today and made it actually usable – I quite like it, actually. I've implemented the character picker from the ASCII art editor, the font now automatically reloads upon saving the character and I've also implemented the new file menu (in the corner) + corrected its terminology, to make more sense. As always, thank you for your feedback! 😁

[merinfor2021]

@prochazkaml Dear Michal, Happy New Year! 🎅 Wish you a strong health, happiness, and may all your wishes come true 😉

[prochazkaml]

Hi, @merinfor2021, and I wish you a Happy New Year as well! (well, technically, over here we're still stuck on December 31th in the absolute dumpster fire that was 2021, but that will change in 5 minutes... 😁)

Of course, may your days continue to be filled with good health, even in these awful times, hopefully, it will soon end... 🙂